Multimedia | Data, news, art come together to visualize fear in America
This piece is compiled of videos and photos from the art unveiling on April 13, 2023. Photos and video by LISA WONG, video & podcast editor
The survey found that the top three biggest fears among Americans for 2022 included corrupt government officials, loved ones getting a serious illness and Russia using nuclear weapons. Graphic by SUKHMAN SAHOTA, art director
The Escalatte Collection of Art recently unveiled a new installation created by world renowned artist Daniel Canogar in Becket Hall last month.
The piece is titled Pareidolia, which means “the human tendency to see a pattern or image of something that does not exist, for example, a face in a cloud.” It’s a digital art piece that combines data from live newsfeeds and Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences’ Survey of American Fears to explore how fear is filtered and magnified in America.
The display consists of four large screens which stream a constantly-changing digital array of abstract colors, images and text. It’s a self-generating artwork that is always updating and reinvents itself for a unique experience for each viewer.
The artwork is constantly taking in data from broadcast news services and matches that data with information from the fears survey to create the artwork.
“When we find matches, we basically pull those news items — the visuals related to that news item — and that is what you are seeing on the artwork,” Canogar said at the unveiling event.
This artwork, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, furthers the impact of the research done by Wilkinson College’s undergraduate research fellows in the Henley Lab and Babbie Center through the visualization of live data sequences.
“I really wanted to create this window into our inner world — and those fears that are tormenting us or floating about that are also very haunting and beautiful and the same time,” Canogar said.
The digital art piece that combines data from live newsfeeds and Wilkinson College’s Survey of American Fears to explore how fear is filtered and magnified in America.
